Through East Anglia in a Motor Car

by James Edmund Vincent

That, however, was the lesson learned in the course of several days. So far as the narrative went we had only passed out of London to Ponder's End, which was of no interest. Then we were at Chingford, on an absolutely lovely day, and the beauty of the Forest of Epping, its popularity among Londoners, and the villainous quality of its roads became simultaneously apparent. Concerning the roads, "Murray" says "the Forest Roads are no longer as in Pepys's days—when he complained that riding in the main way was like 'riding in a kennel.'" On verifying the quotation it appears possible that Mr. Pepys has been misunderstood, but not too clear what he really meant. He had reached Epping overnight, after a visit to Audley End House, "where we drank a most admirable drink," and his entry of 28 February runs: "Up in the morning. Then to London through the forest, where we found the way good, but only in one path, which we kept as though we had rode through a kennel all the way." The meaning of the last clause is perhaps a little obscure; but it is at least clear that Mr. Pepys, following the road by which we travelled in 1906 in all probability, found it tolerable when all the rest were bad. He was more fortunate than we were, for all the way from Chingford past Buckhurst Hill to Epping the road was atrocious. It was the sort of road, too, which promised to remain scandalously bad, until such time as it should be taken thoroughly in hand on some new principle, since it appeared to be made of gravel and dirt, fairly firm in the middle, but shockingly ploughed up at the sides. On this fine day it was crowded with holiday traffic, with persons walking on the footpath by the side, with bicyclists innumerable struggling over the broken surface, with hired carriages carrying family parties for a drive in the sun through the heart of the Forest. If popularity of resort be a reason why a road should be good rather than bad, as surely it ought to be, then some authority has a good deal to answer for.

This was, shameful to relate, my first visit to Epping Forest, but, before giving a first impression of it, there is a ghost to be exorcised. So often as my mind recurs to this passage through the heart of the Forest it is haunted by the memory of one particular cyclist. He was thin, pale to the point of haggardness, anything than robust to look at. He crouched forward over his handle bars, in the manner beloved of the "scorcher" and depriving the exercise of any health-giving effects it might produce, until his back was parallel to the road. We were travelling, designedly as a test of the car, and accurately as the speedometer bore witness, at a steady and unvarying pace of twenty miles an hour, on the level, on downward gradients, and up hills which, while they offered no sort of trouble to a powerful car, would have made me grunt and grumble and go slowly if I had been on a bicycle. Yet this apparent weakling clung to us, being in fact never more than twenty yards behind us for many miles, without showing any signs of severe effort save in the tense features of his pallid face. It was really a great achievement, greater probably than the bicyclist was aware; it exemplified the effect of an air-shield and the value of a pace-maker in races; but it was a relief when, at last, the pale-faced bicyclist relinquished the pursuit.

Is it wrong to give an impression of Epping Forest in early spring, an impression resulting from a single passage through it? Surely not. Did not James Anthony Froude say, or did not somebody say in defence of James Anthony Froude—it really does not matter which—something to the effect that a man may write a tolerable description of a country from a single visit, or a thorough account of it after prolonged study, but that in the intervening period he cannot describe it at all? Whosoever said it, or even if it was never said until now, it is a true saying, for in the period between first impression and thorough knowledge the mind is so much hampered with details that it cannot survey the whole in proportion. It cannot see the wood for the trees. Of this Epping Forest I knew, as most men do, something from hearsay and from desultory reading. I had read of the ancient rights, apparently rather problematical as a matter of history, of the City in the Forest, of the Epping Hunt, of the saving of seven thousand wild acres, lying cheek by jowl with London, by the Epping Forest Act of 1871; had read also countless articles, wherein the sylvan beauties of Epping Forest, its ornithological and entomological treasures, were proclaimed with emphatic sincerity. Yet the place itself was a revelation.

Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem
Quam quæ sunt oculis submissa fidelibus.

So wrote Horace long ago, and "seeing's believing," is a blunt but adequate translation of his verses. Epping Forest was and is a sheer delight. Apart from the roads that traverse it, it is as distinctly genuine and unkempt a piece of English woodland as is to be found on these islands. The reference here is not to fine timber or to monumental trees, but to the tangled thickets of ancient hawthorn, rising from beds of bracken—they were the brown relics of the last year's glory as we saw them—with here and there a natural alley through their midst, which stretched far on either side. Nothing of the tree kind gives such convincing testimony of antiquity as obviously old hawthorns, which have been left to the care of nature. Your huge and venerable oak may be, and very often is, historic; its story may be, and often is, traced back over several centuries. Men mourned over the Fairlop Oak, in Hainault Forest hard by, when it was blown down in 1820, because it had been forty-five feet in girth "and its boughs shadowed an area of 300 ft."—the passage is quoted because its meaning is not too clear—and it is said that the pulpit and lectern of St. Pancras Church were made of the timber. Your historic oaks are the aristocracy of trees; their annals are chronicled by the Debretts and Burkes of forestry. But as there are ancient families of English peasants, their simple pedigrees never kept because they seemed to be of no moment, which are probably far older in the land than any noble family, so there are, in all human probability, thorn trees more ancient by far than the oldest oak. They have survived, or at any rate they give the impression that they have survived, which is what really matters, longer than the oaks for the same reasons which have led to the survival of the rustic families of men. As peasants were left alone when peers went to Tower Hill, so thorn trees have been passed unscathed by storms which have torn off the limbs of oaks or laid them prostrate on the ground, have been spared by the woodcutter in search of his raw material for England's wooden walls. They were insignificant, very tough, of no particular value as timber. They have lived on, unnoticed, growing into impenetrable thickets, bearded with time-honoured lichen, garlanded with fragrant blossom in the season of the year, haunted by nightingales which find in them nesting places defying even the most hardy boy. A few of them have been famous in story, the Glastonbury thorn, for example, and the unica spinosa arbor, round which the battle of Saxon and Dane raged fiercest at Ashdown; but most of the old thorns in the country are, like most of the old peasant families, simply of immemorial antiquity and, when once they have attained maturity, particularly in an exposed spot, they seem to change little from year to year, or in ten years, or twenty, or thirty. That is why, to my mind, a thicket of gnarled and lichened hawthorns, such as you may see by the acre in Epping Forest, and to a greater extent there than in any other forest known to me, is the strongest testimony of genuine antiquity; and it is the thorn brakes, therefore, which charm me more than any other feature of the famous Forest of Epping. They embody the very spirit of wild and untended woodland.

So we passed on through the long and rather pleasing street of Epping, and here the cyclist elected to remain behind, being succeeded by a motor-cyclist, a cheerful wretch who, since the road to Ongar is one of many angles, had us somewhat at his mercy. His pace was nearly equal to the best speed it was prudent for us to achieve; he could catch us and go ahead at severe gradients, especially if there were a corner in front, and he never failed to do so with a triumphant grin on his face. When he was behind he knew that the way by which we passed would be clear to him; when he was in front of us we could entertain no such confidence for ourselves in relation to him. Barring accidents he could probably have clung to us all day—that is to say, unless he had jolted his heart out through his mouth. Motor-cyclists say, of course, that they feel no jolting. They may say the thing which is true, but motor-cycling looks so vibratory that their assertion produces no sort of effect on my mind. However, this particular motor-cyclist grew weary of haunting us before we reached Ongar, and he was not regretted.

Ongar, though it owns a mound and an entrenchment, made no deep impression on us, and we passed on quickly to Chelmsford, trim, neat, ancient, and modern, for the county town of Essex bulks fairly large in far-away history, and, as for the modern appearance of its environs, especially those through which we passed en route for Colchester, it has been written: "The Colchester road, through the northern suburb of Springfield, is enlivened by an avenue of villas and gardens." Comment, as the newspapers used to say, would be superfluous.

This Colchester road, through the northern suburb of Springfield, was the old Roman road of our first tour, through Boreham and Witham and so far as Marks Tey, at any rate; but we travelled it in more genial conditions this time, and could see all there was to be seen. The villages and towns—for Witham is quite a town, and an ancient one at that—did not seduce us into a halt, although those of more leisurely mind may make one for the sake of examining Witham Church, in the walls of which are many Roman bricks. But the country, which pleased Arthur Young by its fertility and by virtue of the intelligent pains with which it was treated by the Essex farmers, is, in its peaceful way, one of the most fascinating and characteristic to be found in all England. I shall not attempt to do justice to it at this point, partly because our journey was taken too early in the spring for a landscape, of which the trees are the chief glory to be seen at its best, but principally because, as I think has been explained before, some account of the scenic beauties of Essex can be given more suitably in an attempt, to be made later, to record some of the experiences acquired, during a more than commonly golden September, in the course of ten days spent in motoring about Essex from Colchester as a centre. Let no more be said here than that the Essex elms, or most of them, are not "shrouded," as is the custom of many southern counties—that is to say, their side branches are not lopped off periodically, to supply fuel and pea-stocks, a mere tuft being left at the top—and the result of leaving the trees in their natural state is to make the roads shady and delightful, although road surveyors might take a different view of them.

Reaching Colchester, whereof any description is postponed for the reason already given, in the late afternoon of a market-day, we betook ourselves to my old head-quarters, the "Red Lion," for afternoon tea. It is a delightfully old-fashioned house, having much oak timber, carved and black, on the front, and the motor enters under an overhanging archway into a courtyard shaded by an immemorial creeper. Here, usually, are military officers to be found, and the house has military traditions, for it is at least said that in the "Old Red Lion" were gathered together the ill-fated Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle and their officers, after the surrender of the city to Fairfax and Ireton had become inevitable, and, if tradition be true, as there is no reason to believe that it is not, it was from the "Red Lion" that they went forth gallantly and cheerfully to meet their deaths. It was a fine episode, and a sad one. "Lucas was first shot, and he himself gave the orders to fire, with the same alacrity as if he had commanded a platoon of his own soldiers. Lisle instantly ran and kissed the dead body, then cheerfully presented himself to a like fate. Thinking that the soldiers, destined for his execution, stood at too great a distance, he called to them to come nearer. One of them replied, 'I'll warrant you, Sir, we'll hit you'; he answered smiling, 'Friends, I have been nearer you when you have missed me.' Thus perished this generous spirit."

Darkness was beginning to threaten before we left Colchester for Ipswich, and it had fallen before Ipswich was reached by the same road used in leaving it heretofore. So we passed through the streets of Ipswich, still crooked, of course, still infested with giant tramcars, and still crowded, into the open country beyond, the light of the acetylene lamps piercing the gloom for fully a quarter of a mile ahead. We pushed on partly because our minds had been half made up to spend the night at Felixstowe, partly because, on the whole, it seemed that Felixstowe would be a more pleasant resting-place than Ipswich. The drawback was that we saw nothing more of the country than that, apparently, we crossed a good deal of heathland, and that at Trimley the towers of two churches appeared in quick succession. They were in fact in the same churchyard, as was seen another day, and one was and is Trimley St. Mary and the other Trimley St. Martin. Why they stand cheek by jowl in this wasteful fashion I am unhappily not able to say, not for lack of inquiry or curiosity, but because inquiry has not been addressed to the right authorities and curiosity has therefore been vain. Of Felixstowe that night we saw nothing much. We gathered an impression of streets of new villas, detached and semi-detached, leading at last to a large hotel which, albeit in a state of semi-hibernation, was welcome. Semi-hibernation means that the dining-room proper was not in use, and that only the first floor bedrooms were ready for the reception of visitors. Still, there was dinner ready, and its readiness quite made up for cramped quarters. Need it be added that the hotel is named after Felix the Burgundian, as is the town? Felix, every schoolboy knows, but a good many grown men and women may have forgotten, was the first Bishop of East Anglia, imported by King Sigeberht in 630 a.d., and had his see at Dunwich, perhaps the most weirdly forlorn place in all England, which we visited next day.